Security
by RosalindHawkins
Summary: The short story of a boy and his blanket. One-shot.


Change was a constant in Mokuba's life. He'd lived with his parents, then with his aunt and uncle, then at an orphanage, then in a mansion. He'd been an orphan, and now he was the vice president of KaibaCorp. He'd had three distinct sets of parental figures: his real parents, his aunt and uncle, Gozaburo Kaiba and his wife. Now, the closest thing he had to a father was his brother. He'd once seen his brother every day, playing games with him for hours. Now, he was lucky if Seto came home in time for dinner.

He'd experienced a lot of change that he couldn't control. He'd been in many dangerous situations. He'd undergone high amounts of stress, anxiety, and uncertainty in his young life, but he'd found a way to manage it.

Through all of the change and the stress, he'd found a way to feel safe. Through all of the change, he'd held something constant and steady, and surprisingly enough, his constant wasn't his brother. It was like Seto always said: you couldn't count on anybody for anything in this world, only yourself. He couldn't count on Seto to be there and protect him from being kidnapped. He accepted this fact.

What he'd held constant was one of his most precious possessions: his security blanket. Made for him by the mother he never got to meet, that blanket had always been a comfort to him. When he was bullied in the orphanage, he'd find a quiet place to cry and trace over the embroidery, so lovingly stitched, that spelled out his name. At the time, it had been his only possession, the single thing he could call his own.

As he grew older and grew under Gozaburo's strict rules, he'd been forced to detach from the blanket. He wasn't allowed to carry it around with him anymore, not even just inside the house. He'd hid it in his room to make sure that nobody took it away in his absence, afraid of losing the only connection he'd ever had to his mother.

Then Gozaburo had... passed on. That was the only way Mokuba could think of it without shuddering afresh at the disturbing events that had facilitated his step-father's death. Suddenly, nobody cared that he had a security blanket, but he'd become so accustomed to hiding it that he continued to do so. He still needed it to cope with distress, though, so he'd carefully cut a sliver of one corner off the old, faded blanket and tucked it carefully inside his locket, the fabric pressed up against the picture of his older brother when he was Mokuba's age. Why didn't he smile like that anymore?

Huddled against the cold stone wall of the dungeon in Pegasus' castle, Mokuba gazed with longing on the picture of his brother, steadily rubbing the shred of cloth between his fingers. He was in a prison cell and his ankles were chained to the wall, but he could still smile a little because he had that bit of blanket-and that extinct smile-to comfort him.

Helping Anzu stack boxes along the wall of the warehouse within which Marik's Ghouls had imprisoned them, Mokuba felt the metal locket thud against his chest with a reassuring weight. He could cling stubbornly to a sliver of hope because he had that piece of his past close to his heart, and nobody could ever take it away from him.

When he was in the Virtual World with his step-brother, waiting for his real brother to find him, he could continue to believe that he would be rescued because of the small scrap of home he always kept with him. Noah had been amazed at Mokuba's faith, incapable of understanding the kind of love that supported Mokuba through all of his hardships.

Each time he wrapped his hand around his necklace, he could feel the slight bulge in the pendant's cover that the fabric created, and he would push on that bulge to flatten it out. The act was repetitive and reassuring. It became a nervous tic, and while nobody understood it, nobody questioned it either. He grew up, but he never parted with the locket and never removed the bit he'd cut from the only remaining artifact of his early childhood, no matter how worn or threadbare it got.

Over a decade after he'd excised his mother's last gift to him, Mokuba held his firstborn son cradled in his arms, his eyes glowing with pride. The newborn was wrapped up in the blanket made by his mother, a blanket that had, at Mokuba's request, been modeled after his own. His son's name was embroidered on the corner, and while he hoped that his son cherished the gift, he also hoped that he'd never have to use it as a substitute for his true mother. If Mokuba got his way, his son would never need a blanket in order to feel secure.

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 **Author Notes:** Written for a request. If you enjoyed this, please review and feel free to request a one-shot of your own!


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